Thread history

I don't want to get into a sunshine-blowing contest =), but I certainly don't think of you as the one-trick pony you paint yourself as here. There's a ton of insight and intelligence that goes into deciding which of the zillion existing Robocode bot features have potential to be exploited 10x further. And to get to the top, you not only have to invent/exploit new stuff, you also have to do everything else as well as everyone else. Especially if your bot is open source.

I do personally think of Skilgannon as probably the "best" Robocoder ever, but it's an impossible comparison to Paul Evans or ABC or other ancient Robocoders, like Michael Jordan vs Wilt Chamberlain. The latter get credit for being pioneers, and rightly so, but can you penalize the former for simply coming onto the scene at a later date? And if you can, how dominant do they have to be to offset that penalty? King of General 1v1 for 4.5 years, or holding all 1v1 thrones concurrently, (or 6 rings in 8 years in the modern NBA,) are pretty strong points on a resume.

But in general, I don't usually try to rank the legendary Robocoders. There are a bunch of folks that have made huge and unique contributions to Robocode and the RoboWiki and they're all awesome in their own ways. =)